Finding her voice with ‘Paw-sitive’ tales

Musfira Shaikh believes that her writing skill is her ‘superpower’. This seven-year-old, a third-standard student of Markaz Public School at Kaithappoyil, is a published author. Her book of bedtime stories titled 7 Paw-sitive Tales is now available on most online reading platforms.

Musfira is a child with speech difficulty and has been hesitant to speak even in her school. Writing has been her way of expressing her feelings from a very young age, and it has helped her overcome her challenges to a great extent.

“She used to demand for a dairy initially and we did not know why. Later, we found her scribbling her thoughts in her rough book. Realising she had a talent in writing, we decided to nurture it,” said Mubashira Khot, her mother, a columnist in an Urdu daily as well as a parenting coach.

Musfira’s family is from Pune, Maharashtra, and has been living at Kaithappoyil for around five years. Her father, Dr. Mohammed Ishaque Shaikh, is a medical practitioner who has published two books in the field.

“She has writing in her blood and we could nurture it with the help of structured guidance through an online learning platform. Her instructor Harshana P.M focused on improving her communication skills along with writing skills, and Musfira has found her voice through storytelling,” Ms. Khot said.

‘7 Paw-sitive Tales’, as the name suggests, is a set of seven bedtime stories with a moral at the end of it. “My mother used to tell me stories during bedtime. But I wanted my own bedtime story book,” Musfira said. She has taken instances from her life to come up with the stories in which the characters are a variety of animals. “Three Little Kittens is my favourite story because it is about me and my siblings,” she said shyly.

Her first story was published in a children’s publication, Kid’s Age, in 2024, which encouraged her to write more.